Fixing Rory
by RogueWitch
Summary: During "Let Me Hear Your Balalaikas Ring Out" Jess is about to leave after the scene with Logan, but Rory doesn't let him, instead she asks him to help her fix everything.
1. Chapter 1

Part 1

I followed Jess out of the restaurant, I couldn't believe how Logan had acted, it was completely unforgivable, it was everything he had constantly promised me he wasn't. He acted stuck up and rude and like he was above everyone else, though at the heart of it I knew it was because it was that he felt threatened by Jess, that was no excuse for the things he said, or the way he acted.

"What the hell is going on?" Jess sounded angry, which was completely understandable, we had planned a nice evening where we could catch up, just two old friends, and he ended up being attacked by my boyfriend for an hour before he finally had enough, and I honestly couldn't blame him, I was kind of impressed that he held on that long.

"I told you, he's tired! And his family's bugging him right now…" I didn't even know why I was defending Logan.

"I mean, with you! What's going on with you?" That took me by surprise, I knew that a lot of things had changed since I had last seen Jess, but I didn't expect him to call me on it, I didn't think that he would try for that kind of confrontation.

"What do you mean?" If he was going to accuse me of something, he could damn well tell me what it was. I wasn't the little girl he knew, but I also wasn't going to be his punching bag just because Logan pissed him off.

"You know what I mean! I know you. I know you better than anyone! This isn't you." He was right, with all the anger his comment stirred up, he was right; all of this wasn't me, and Jess did know me better then anyone, sometimes better then I knew myself, and that's what made me fall in love with him, and what made hearing all of this so hard.

"I don't know." I had changed so much, and so many things had gone wrong in such a short period that I didn't know where to start, where to go from here, how to fix it, that I had just let everyone else carry me along, I had let them run everything, and I knew that wasn't me, and so did Jess.

"What are you doing? Living at your grandparents' place? Being in the DAR? No Yale – why did you drop out of Yale?" And that was the heart of it, why did I leave Yale, and did I really want to tell Jess what a mess I had become since he left?

"It's complicated!" That was a lie, it wasn't complicated, it was simple, I ran scared, and I was ashamed to admit it.

"It's not! It's not complicated!" Of course he would call me on it, of course he would know, he had just told me he knew me better then anyone, but I tried to lie to him anyway.

"You don't know!" And the lies just keep on coming.

"This isn't you! This! You going out with this jerk, with the Porsche! We made fun of guys like this!" He was so angry, and he had a right to be, I was screwing up my life, and I had no real credible reason for it, I had let some big shot corporate guy tell me I wasn't good enough, and I had let that hold weight, I would have never done that before, I would have just said, screw him, and gone on proving him wrong.

"You caught him on a bad night." Why was I defending Logan, he didn't deserve to be defended, Jess deserved to be defended, he had been attacked, and now here I am lying to him, telling him that I'm okay with how my life is, and I'm not, telling him that my boyfriend isn't always a jerk, and that's not even true.

"This isn't about him! Okay? Screw him! What's going on with you? This isn't you, Rory. You know it isn't. What's going on?" I could feel my eyes fill with tears, he was so right, and I didn't know what to do about it, I didn't know how to change any of it.

"I don't know. I don't know." It was the first really honest thing that I told him since we had stepped outside, and I could see that he realized that, I could also see that he was giving up.

"Okay, uh. Maybe, maybe we'll catch up at a better time. Happy birthday, by the way. Wasn't that a couple of weeks ago? Your birthday?" He started to walk away, and my brain was yelling at me to not let him go, that if I let him go now I wouldn't ever really get this chance again.

"Yeah, it was a couple of weeks ago, and it sucked. Jess, don't leave." I caught him by the arm before he could step off the curb and go back to his car.

"Why not, Rory? You obviously have things that you need to figure out, and the first one is that blond bimbo inside." He gestured back to Logan, who I could see watching us from just inside the door.

"Screw him. Isn't that what you just said?" I hooked my arm with Jess' and guided him over to his car. "I say we go get pizza and coffee."

"Only if you agree that you need to fix everything." He stopped me from pulling him all the way to his car, and looked me in the eye.

"I agree, things got way out of hand, and I let them get that way, and your right, everything you said was right. I'm just not sure how to fix it, I've messed up so bad, I don't know how to go back." I could feel the tears running down my cheeks now, they where hot and they made a lump in the back of my throat, like they had been building up for so long that they where forcing their way to the surface. "My mom barely came to my birthday party, she isn't speaking to me. I didn't even give her my cell phone number when I changed it. How am I going to fix all that?"

"After pizza, we're going to drive to Stars Hollow, and you're going to walk into your house and you're going to tell Lorelai that you love her and miss her, and you're going to ask her to help you get everything back on track." I nodded my head, not able to say anything. Jess wiped the tears from my cheeks, and held my face in his hands, making sure I was looking him in the eyes. "Then you're going to ask her if I can crash on your couch, cause I don't have anywhere else to stay."

"Okay." I smiled a little through my tears, and reached out to put my arms around Jess, who pulled me into a hug.

"We can fix this, Rory. All you had to do was ask." He rubbed small circles along my back, and continued to hold on, knowing I needed the support.

"I'm asking now." I said in a small voice, one I almost couldn't hear.

"Good, I'll be here as long as you need me, but I do need to get back to Philadelphia sometime in the near future." He pulled away slightly and looked me in the eye. "But, if you need me to, I can write from here too, just till you get everything back together."

"You don't have to do that." I wanted him to stay, I wanted him to stay forever, but I couldn't tell him that.

"I want to." He leaned in and kissed me on my tear stained cheek. "Now, how about that pizza, I'm starving, all this drama really works up a guy's appetite. How about you, you hungry?"

"Please, I'm a Gilmore Girl, I can always eat." We headed to the car, leaving Logan to watch us from the restaurant; I didn't even bother to look back.


	2. Chapter 2

Part 2

Jess drove around Hartford looking for a good pizza restaurant, somewhere that wasn't full of tea light candles and ambiance, somewhere we would have gone back in high school. We ended up driving halfway back to Stars Hollow before we found anywhere suitable. It was a small place, with old vinyl booths that where cracking from the weight of years and the patrons that had frequently sat on them, there where no candles and there was an old jukebox in the corner that had fifties music playing the whole time we were eating. Jess ordered two large pies with everything, knowing how much I could eat, even while I was upset, especially while I was upset, and convinced the server to just leave the pot of coffee, while he enjoyed a coke. It felt like old times, old and comfortable.

"Are you going to tell me about it?" Jess had long since finished eating, having polished off six pieces of pizza and two glasses of coke.

"Tell you about what?" I had been avoiding talking about anything real for the past hour, we had touched on music and movies that we where now into, and how that had changed since high school. We had even gotten in a short argument about Rand verses Hemingway, which we had long ago come to the conclusion that neither of us where going to agree with the other about, but it was still nice to have someone to talk to intelligently about literature outside of the classroom.

"Why you left school. Why you're not talking to your mom. Why you're living with your grandparents in Hartford. Pick one." He looked me right in the eye, Logan probably would have avoided asking the questions, he liked to avoid conflict, or drink it away, but if he had asked he wouldn't have looked at me while he asked. Logan would have looked at the table, the floor, his hands, anything to avoid looking at me in the eye when he asked the hard questions; Jess looked me in the eye.

"Mitchum Huntzburger told me I didn't have it." I tried to look at Jess when I said it, but now that I was talking to Jess, one of the only people who could look right through me and see everything, if felt like a flimsy, co-out excuse. "He said that I would one day make someone a great assistant, but I didn't have what it takes to become a journalist, that I don't have the drive to make it in the business."

"And you believed him? Rory, you're the girl who told me that I could be whatever I wanted to be, that I could make something of myself when everyone else was telling me that I was a loser, that I would always be a loser. I can't believe that you would let some jerk tell you that you couldn't do something." Jess sat back in his seat, looking at me in complete disbelief, and I could see the disappointment there on his face as well. I looked down at the table and picked at my nails. I didn't want to see disappointment on anyone else's face; I didn't want to be looked at that way anymore.

"He's one of the biggest names in the newspaper business, he knows what he's talking about." I knew it was a justification for an excuse that no longer seemed to hold any weight for me.

"So what, I've read your articles, you're a great writer; you have wonderful instincts and a unique way of turning a phrase. The Rory I know would have worked just that much harder to show him that he was wrong, not curled up in a ball and let him trample all over her." Again, Jess was right, the girl he knew would have shown Mitchum Huntzburger what she was made of, but I wasn't quite sure what I was made of anymore.

"What if I can't hack it?" I still couldn't look up at him, I didn't want to see the pity or anything else on his face, I wanted him to look at me with wonder again, like he used to, I wanted him to be proud of me, and at the moment there was nothing to be proud of.

"Don't be ridiculous, Rory, if anyone can make it, you can. Your one of the smartest people I know, you have worked hard at Chilton to get into Yale, and you did, you where Valedictorian of your class at the hardest college prep school in the country, you can do anything you put your mind to. And, hey, if I can write a book, you can write anything."

"You read my articles?"

"Luke sends them to me. My favorite was on the ballet, you really tore that girl a new one." He was grinning at me when I finally looked up at him and I knew he was right, I had known he was right from the beginning, but I needed him to tell me why.

"That article just won't stop following me. You know she stalked me, and threatened me after that article came out? She wrote 'Die Jerk' on my white board, and yelled at me in the cafeteria. It was horrible, and the worst part was that everyone thought that it was one of my best articles." I picked up another slice of pizza, working my way through the second pizza.

"Gilmore, I had forgotten how much you could eat, I mean, I remembered you could eat, but where do you put it all?"

"It's the Gilmore phenomenon; mom says that if we were anybody else we would weight five hundred pounds." I grinned, and poured myself another cup of coffee.

"Well, eventually they're going to want to close the place down, and we still need to go to Stars Hollow and talk to your mom."

"I know. Promise you'll hold my hand?" I really wanted to go home, I didn't like living with Grandma and Grandpa, but I was scared that mom wouldn't want me to come home, that she was still mad at me.

"I'll hold your hand, and you can hold mine when we ask if I can sleep on the couch."

"Deal." Jess paid for the pizza and drinks and followed me back out to his car.

"Do you want to go back to your grandparents and get your car?" We sat in Jess' car waiting for it to warm up, deciding which direction to go.

"No, I'll worry about that tomorrow. Tonight I just want to go see mom, because if she doesn't want me home, I'm not going to want to drive anywhere, and if I get my car, I'll have to."

"Okay, then on to Stars Hollow. Hold on tight."


End file.
